O`MALLEY`S LAWS: YOU DON`T HAVE TO BE IRISH TO LIKE TRAVELINGIN

Kathleen O`Malley, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

My decision to visit the Land of Many Headlines was prompted by a sudden itch to travel, which was scratched by a very affordable tour being planned by my suburban church. Who could resist a week in Israel, airfare and all expenses included, for $1,200?

Not I, who for the last 15 years was accustomed to spending nothing for stay-at-home vacations. Not my 16-year-old daughter, who looked at a breathtaking National Geographic photograph of Jerusalem at sunset and exclaimed: ''Oh, wow! Could we shop there?'' And not my 77-year-old mother, a seasoned traveler who had somehow missed the Mideast in her globe-hopping.

We three generations left for Israel with overpacked suitcases, a touch of anxiety, too many maps and guidebooks, and (in two out of three cases)

crisp new passports. We returned to the United States with 17 rolls of snapshots, mind-boggling VISA bills, suitcases filled with souvenirs and a much better understanding of Israel`s political turmoil.

Okay, so I don`t understand it completely (who does?), but at least I know now where Syria and Lebanon are--to the east and north, just across the rolls of barbed wire and past the guards of the UN peacekeeping force. Scripture readings have taken on more meaning now that I can recall some of the sites where the stories took place. When a TV preacher offers two

''widow`s mites'' (shekels) to everyone who sends a $20 contribution, I know that he`s making about $19.98 on the deal.

I learned so much, in fact, that I have consolidated my knowledge into what I call ''O`Malley`s Laws of Israel,'' a sort of thumbnail guide for others who nosh on bagels and cream cheese and dream of visiting Israel:

1. Bagels and cream cheese are not big in Israel. They are what Americans consider ''traditional Israeli fare.'' They`re not. But it works both ways. The ''American style breakfasts'' offered in tourist hotels resemble nothing you`ve ever seen in America. When was the last time you popped into Denny`s before work and filled your plate with pickled herring, sliced beets and tomatoes, canned prunes and thrice-baked hard rolls, and washed it all down with instant coffee and severely diluted Tang?

2. Beef sandwiches with a glass of milk are not big in Israel. Kosher dietary restrictions, honored by most Jewish-owned tourist hotels, prohibit serving meat and dairy products at the same table. Milk and butter are available if you ask, but we have enough trouble with an ''Ugly American''

image already; so why not live with margarine and without milk for the duration of your visit? You can get coffee (probably instant) if you ask for it, unless, as was our experience, your waiter is a Moslem and the annual Festival of Ramadan starts at 8 p.m., and you have asked for your coffee at 7:59.

3. Israel is no place to travel with a 16-year-old who thinks the four basic food groups are Diet Coke, popcorn, peanut butter and celery sticks. Forewarned by a friend who had traveled with teenagers, I packed a family-size jar of peanut butter to fill in the gaps created by local delicacies such as the Sea of Galilee`s St. Peter`s Fish (''Oh, gross! The face is still on!''). It took three days to find Diet Coke at $1 a can. Unless your teenagers are gastronomically adventurous, leave them home. If you must bring them, also bring one family size jar of peanut butter per teenager per 3.6 days of travel.

4. No matter where you are, there is another American from another tour right behind you. Israel is rich in beauty, tradition, culture, history . . . and tour buses. If America made as much from Israeli tourists as Israel makes from American tourists, our street signs, menus and price tags would all be translated into their language, too. You will probably meet more Americans in Israel than you ever met in America, and you will run into the same tour group from Orlando or Grand Forks at half of the places you visit.

5. You can take a vacation to Israel, or you can take a tour to Israel. You cannot do both on the same trip. Tour planners operate on a 16-sites-a-day plan, while vacation planners have a tendency to allow time for, say, sleeping. For instance, if you are on a vacation, you will probably spend at least two days at the Dead Sea spas, relaxing, being massaged for hours, and covered with a substance called Black Mud. If you are on a tour, you will have a 15-minute dip and be back on the bus before the minerals have caked on your bathing suit, and you will buy two hermetically sealed packets of the mud at the souvenir store. When you return home, you will open it and say ''This is disgusting'' and give it to your sister for Christmas.

6. If you are a Christian, you are ''on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.''

If you are Jewish, you are ''going to Israel'' or ''returning to the Promised Land.'' Jewish friends have confirmed my impression that tour guides make little attempt at objectivity in deciding which story will be presented. If your guide`s name is Joseph, don`t count on spending a whole lot of time at the Holocaust Museum. If his name is Sol, Bethlehem will probably be a ''ride- through'' on the bus.

7. There are a minimum of three ''traditional sites'' for everything that happened in the life of Jesus. Our tour was a Christian one, but there are probably even more ''traditional sites'' on the Jewish and Moslem tours because they`ve been around longer, giving more people more opportunities to say things like, ''Hey, I`ll just bet Abraham could have said that right on this very spot, don`t you think?'' and began charging admission.

8. ''Modest clothing'' means modest clothing. Tourists are always forewarned but frequently forget that some religious sites require women to be modestly attired. In America, that means wrapping a towel around your string bikini. In Israel, it means high necklines, covered shoulders and upper arms, and skirts at least knee-length. One of our tour members spent the better part of a day in the Old City of Jerusalem trying to convince modesty judges at religious sites that the blue seersucker sport jacket she had tied around her bermuda shorts was just a skirt with sleeves.

9. No matter where you are, there is a ruin nearby. When you get home and begin to sort through your snapshots, you will be hard-pressed to identify which ruin was in which place on which day--unless, of course, you are one of those travelers who takes copious notes at each location and labels each roll of film before throwing it into your travel bag. In that case, you probably balance your checkbook, too; so we are operating on entirely different levels of efficiency. I found it amusing to label my snapshots of ruins by picking names of cities off the map of Israel, and to see if anyone would know the difference. So far, no one has.

10. At every ruin, there is a souvenir stand. Most of them have the same merchandise: your basic velvet yarmulkes with braided trim, your basic beaded necklaces made by the merchant`s mother, your basic rosaries made by nuns or monks, your basic hand-carved olivewood statuettes, your basic skinny brass and mother-of-pearl bracelets. A few have items of local interest, like the shop at the Jordan River baptismal site, which offers your basic sealed bottles of Jordan River water, and shops near the Dead Sea, which offer your basic Dead Sea mud.

11. No matter what you paid for something, or how brilliantly you bargained, you will find the same thing somewhere else for less. A shopkeeper in the Old City asked $20 for a copper, brass and silver bracelet I had seen at dozens of shops in the Jerusalem markets. After 15 minutes of what I considered exceptionally skilled bargaining on my part, I bought it for $12. At the next stand, just to give myself a sense of satisfaction about what a good deal I`d just struck, I smugly asked the price of the same bracelet. It was $6. I was too embarrassed to turn around to see if the guy next door was rolling on the floor laughing and holding his stomach.

12. Asking the price of an item is like asking a senior citizen how the grandchildren are: time-consuming. Israel is like one giant garage sale. The prices marked on an item are just a starting point for bargaining (or

''hondling,'' which has nothing to do with foreign cars). The second you express interest in an item or its cost, or even look like you`re thinking about it, the merchant will invite you to come into his store, tell you that the item in question was made by his father (or his sister, or his brother, or his mother, or his children), then act insulted when you offer him less than he is asking. He will flatter your intelligence, your looks and your ancestors, and become teary-eyed when you still refuse to settle for his price. He will throw himself at your feet as you leave the store, and he will probably settle for your price (plus a few shekels to save his pride). It`s a great game.

13. No matter how much money you bring, it`s not enough. If you`re on a tour, conceivably you could return home without having spent a penny because everything, even tips, is usually included in your cost. But no matter how firm your resolve, you will find yourself saying over and over again, ''Yes, but that`s one-tenth what it would cost at Neiman-Marcus'' or ''That`s half what it would cost at K-mart'' and then you will buy it.

14. There`s no place like home. Dorothy Gale`s happiness at waking up in Kansas after her sojourn in the Land of Oz was nothing compared to the joy our group felt when our 747 touched down at Kennedy Airport. Three hours out on our connecting flight from Athens, we had let go of the fear that we, like another church tour group still being held hostage, might be hijacked to some strange Mideast city. It was another restless five hours before we heard the first screech of wheels on an American runway and applause broke out. Then, hesitantly, one or two voices began singing ''God Bless America.'' By the time we reached ''Stand beside her and guide her,'' the voices of hundreds of grateful American tourists, and even a few passengers who hadn`t spoken a word of English, filled the cabin. For many of us, especially those who were making our first trip abroad, ''promised land'' had taken on an entirely new meaning. God Bless America, my home, sweet home.